On May 23rd I gave an hour-long webinar on The Power of Process: Workflow, BPM, and Healthcare. Here’s the YouTube video of my presentation.

If you’re from healthcare, it’s a great introduction to the ideas and technologies of workflow automation and business process management applied to healthcare’s many workflow and process problems. I use an approach my wife calls “Cat. Dog. Tree.” What is the smallest number of simplest ideas that go together in only one way and communicate what needs to be communicated.

If you’re from the BPM industry, the first 37 minutes is introductory, but also entertaining. You’ll appreciate the need for education and addressing healthcare workflow’s unique pain points. Or, you may wish to fast forward to the excellent questions. They will give you a perspective on what healthcare wonders about business process management. The questions include: Who should be workflow champions? What is the relationship between workflow automation and knowledge management? What about clinicians who say their clinical processes are too unpredictable? How to deal with the wide variety of un-interfaced health IT systems? What’s the connection between BPM and Lean?

While my examples are intra-organizational — patient encounter, hospital department, hospital — workflow engines and process-aware information systems are just as relevant, if not more so, to inter-organizational workflows.

Hi Charles
‘Process’ is really central to health and social care, obviously in health informatics, but in actual care delivery whatever the location – hospital ward, clinic, family doctor, or patient’s home. The healing process relies on time and a sequential progression.
With this emphasis on process it also essential to include three other P’s: PURPOSE, PRACTICE and POLICY.
There is constant debate concerning integrated care and care coordination – perhaps the reason why is the need to factor in the 4P’s? If they are not then a technical solution may be found wanting, when a socio-technical solution is needed.
I champion a framework that incorporates the 4P’s and is situated and multicontextual. There are posts and bibliography on the ‘Welcome to the QUAD’ blog: